site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26575 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I want to discuss the Pathfinder fanfic "in His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die". I'm going to start by copy-pasting the submission statement I gave it on /r/rational and then I will dive deeper into the culture war aspects of the work:

Iomedae can tell Lily how all these vegetables are picked and which are the best ones to pick. ...some of them are out of season. It is super weird that they're here. How did they do that, preservation magic? On vegetables?

Evelyn Steel: "I don't know a lot about the Costco supply chain but they might be from somewhere far away where they're in season? Transport is pretty cheap with container ships, like we saw in the video. Or they might be grown in a greenhouse - that's a big building with a glass roof that lets in the sun, but where you can keep it warmer inside than outside and sort of make the plants think it's the right time of year."

Iomedae: "That is very good. Say to the seasons, no! We stronger!"

So I was reading Eliezer Yudkowsky's Twitter feed, as one does, and suddenly I saw that he had retweeted a post about a glowfic. Now, I've never been able to get into glowfic before; I've bounced off planecrash more times than you can imagine. But the quotes seemed interesting enough that I decided to try taking a look anyway...

...and I was hooked. I binged it over several hours, and are currently refreshing the thread several times a day in hopes of catching the next update.

The basic premise is that a 15-year-old Paladin chick named Iomedae gets reverse-Isekai'd to Earth on her way to join her holy order as a novice. At first she falls-in with a group of illegal immigrant workers, but later comes to the attention of the authorities after stabbing a man who attempts to rape her. Unfortunately, while fifteen may be old enough to be considered an adult back in medieval fantasyland, here in twenty-first century America it means Iomedae is distinctly underage, so she gets assigned to veteran foster mother Evelyn Steel.

What follows is an absolutely glorious outside look at contemporary American society through the eyes of a teenage Paladin from a medieval fantasy setting. You get the good (21st century USA really is an absurdly rich place by both historical and international standards; praise God and Costco!), the bad (adolescents are legally treated as children despite being biological adults), and the ugly (the realities of what immigration enforcement actually entails). Toss in a generous helping of economics, ethical philosophy, effective altruism, and taking ideas seriously, and you have the makings of a rationalist classic.

Negatives? I don't like Lily. She was cute at first, but her speech impediment got old really fast. Eventually her posts started getting translated into standard English in footnotes, but even so I don't think she is pulling her weight as a character; I don't see how the story would be worse without her.

Finally, if you like this story, you may also enjoy "that I may be as bold in my beliefs"; an AU where Iomedae ends up in Sunnydale defending her immigrant worker friends from Buffyverse vampires with the help of Slayer Karen Teller.

Now, as I said, Iomedae is from medieval fantasyland, and her writer does a good job portraying her someone who has different values and ideas from a modern American. I particularly liked the way she reacted to the modern concept of rape:

Doctor: " - most cases of rape among students at school are cases of students who are already dating, and go somewhere private together on purpose but with different understandings of what will happen from there, or of a person getting so drunk or high they cannot meaningfully consent to sex and then someone choosing to have sex with them anyway, or of adults seeking out sex with people under the age of consent, which we call statutory rape."

Iomedae: "Okay I think the word rape not mean what I thinked it mean. What is the word for making someone have sex with you by being stronger than them or having a better knife."

Doctor: "...that is rape. It's just a very rare kind compared to all the other kinds I just described."

All the other things he described were just - situations in which obviously someone will have sex with you because you weren't trying to stop them. Which is pretty different from situations where people will have sex with you even if you are trying to stop them. But maybe if there are lots of people around who will go off with random teenage boys or get insensible with drink around them then most people do not try to go after people who'll forcefully object. Maybe in America you really pretty much only get raped if you are without papers or astoundingly reckless.

I found this extremely refreshing. The central example of rape is "woman was minding her own business when someone broke into her house and forced her". It is incredible how little of what gets called "rape" actually fits that category, and can be better described as "woman cruising for a dicking regrets the dicking come next morning". It is the worst argument in the world, enshrined into our legal code.

Or consider how she deals with the stifling secularism of progressive society:

Iomedae: "I - understand - you both have bad time with church. I am sorry that you did. I do not know enough to say more about it. And I have no guess if Jesus alive or no. But I think Christians good and cool. I believe you that my life easier if I pretend this. I no going pretend it."

Claudette Desjardins: "...Okay, fair, if all Christians were like you about it then churches would probably not suck."

Emily Bergeron: "I think probably a lot of Christians are lovely people who don't suck at all and don't want anyone to go to Hell? I mean, Evelyn's Christian. It's just, like, the obnoxious ones are louder." Shrug. "Also a lot of Christians, like, don't want their kids learning real science in school, or don't believe in modern medicine, whereas I feel like your god would be all in favor of technology and understanding the world better."

Iomedae: "Technology and Costco and space and understand the world very good and important and the job of all people. I believe you many Christians say or do bad things, but the ones I have knowed were good to me when they have very little to share, and my life was so much better with them, and things very bad for them now and it my fault, so I no going to - pretend I have no thing to do with them for life easier. And I think Jesus have right idea and I bet He does want me grow up be like Him, if He is real."

This is intensely upsetting. Why is this so upsetting. Probably because she does not have many allies, and she needs allies, and you have to make compromises to keep allies, but - she was not actually expecting 'denounce Jesus and the people who follow him' to be her new allies' first demand. She would not really have imagined that as in the range of demands allies made of each other; she hasn't asked anyone else to pray, or to pause before meals for her to pray, or even to allow her time in her day for it. She is trying to keep in mind that 'how to appease Americans' is valuable information even when the choice she makes is that it is not worth it to her to appease Americans, but it turns out it's still deeply unpleasant to navigate demands with that in mind.

I imagine more than one red triber has felt something similar upon going to college. But it goes further than that; Iomedae really believes in hell, the way she believes in the grocery store around the corner, and that is obviously going to have a huge effect on the way she lives her life.

And just so I don't get accused of only liking this story because it confirms all my biases, Iomedae also has words for modern immigration enforcement:

Iomedae: "I also angry it take years get papers. I think maybe I go different place where people can work without papers."

Well. This is really not going well, is it.

Evelyn Steel: "Iomedae, you're a clever girl and a determined girl and you know I can't stop you. I think you next year will be happier if you stay long enough to learn more about - what the places where they let you work without papers - are like. ...Actually, I should look this up, but I think there might not be very many places like that, just - places where the government isn't very good at government things and so they won't notice if someone is breaking the law."

Iomedae: "I pretty sure there many places where legal work without papers. That a evil America thing. No where else do that."

So, overall, I highly recommend this fic. It will make you think, and it will give you a great outside look at the assumptions we take for granted living in modernity. If you have never played Pathfinder, don't worry; neither have I. As long as you know about paladins and wizards from reading The Order of the Stick or similar you know everything you need to know to enjoy the narrative. Iomedae may have ascended to godhood in canon, but in this story that is just her awesome destiny.

the bad (adolescents are legally treated as children despite being biological adults)

My visceral reaction to that is "This is a fantasy by somebody who wants to fuck fifteen year olds" and that makes me bounce right off. Probably I'm jaundiced from our friend of former times with the rants about how children are enslaved (and the fiction about raping fourteen year olds to force them pregnant because men should be leaders and women should be barefoot and pregnant or something).

Eh... yes, there is a certain type of person (like our former friend) who really likes talking about how back in Ye Olden Days, 13 was prime childbearing age for FEEEmales. (Which actually isn't true because girls used to reach physical maturity later than is common today, and 13-year-olds getting knocked up was one reason for the high childbirth mortality rate.) ) Otoh, it really is a historical reality (which few modern fantasies, including RPGs, honestly engage with) that "teenagers" used to be basically young adults lacking only experience, and were treated as such.

How it is executed in a given story probably tells you where the author is coming from.

Lacking experience is a pretty big lacking. I would add lacking experience AND JUDGEMENT, though (see anyone that takes on 6 figures of debt for an art history degree). The real question is was it easier for a 16 year old to be an adult in previous centuries because mostly you were able to learn all the things growing up in your village that you needed to know as an adult then? Is it only modern complex society that requires more time to learn enough to not fuck up?

I think you can learn all the things required to actually do a farmer-equivalent job in modern society by 16 - if you don't spend 12 years on general education. The problem is that even if it was allowed, you'd be essentially second class. What kind of parent wants that for their children?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats